By Egil Asprem Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions [Paperback]

by Egil Asprem

This fascinating work explores John Dee's Enochian magic and the history of its reception. Dee (1527–1608/9), an accomplished natural philosopher and member of Queen Elizabeth I's court, was also an esoteric researcher whose diaries detail years of conversations with angels achieved with the aid of crystal-gazer Edward Kelley. His Enochian magic offers a method for contacting angels and demons based on secrets found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.Examining this magical system from its Renaissance origins to present day occultism, Egil Asprem shows how the reception of Dee's magic is replete with struggles to construct and negotiate authoritative interpretational frameworks for doing magic. Arguing with Angels offers a novel, nuanced approach to questions about how ritual magic has survived the advent of modernity and demonstrates the ways in which modern culture has recreated magical discourse.

Genres: Occult, Nonfiction, History, Religion, Esoterica, Magic

Unknown Binding

First published April 13, 2012

About the author

Egil Asprem, Ph.D. (History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, 2012; M.A., Religious Studies, U. Amsterdam, 2008; B.A., Religious Studies & Philiosphy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2006), is Professor in the History of Religions within the Department of Ethnology at Stockholm University, with a focus on western esotericism, new religious movements and alternative spritiualities, and the cognitive science of religion. He is editor-in-chief of Aries, a Member of the Board of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and with Kennet Granholm co-founder and coordinator of Contemporary Esotericism Research Network (ContERN).

Reviews

[Toran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect overview although you may want to read some earlier works before such as Francis Yates "The occult philosophy in the Elizabethan age" to get a better grasp of the basic concepts the author is working with.

[Jukka Häkkinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teoksessa arvioidaan okkultistisen eenokin kielen historiaa ja käyttöä esoteerisissa piireissä. Vaikka aihe on kiinnostava, käsittely on paikoin turhankin yksityiskohtaista. Välillä myös on yllättävän puolustelevaa ja muusta kirjasta erottuvaa pohdintaa kielen aitoudesta.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this short history of the Enochian language and the method(s) of operative magic based thereupon – as first recorded by John Dee and Edward Kelley in the sixteenth century on the putative basis of a series of angelic revelations – Egil Asprem concisely explores the reception, appropriation, and elaboration of that system by occultists and skeptics alike. Drawing sporadic and ambivalent interest shortly after Dee's own lifetime, Dee and Kelley's records largely faded into obscurity before reemerging in what would prove to be a more persistent current of engagement in the late nineteenth century. Since then, as Asprem shows, the Enochian materials have been a continual object of discourse within the communities comprising modern occultism, where they have been repeatedly and – with no shortage of polemic – divergingly interrogated, interpreted, justified, developed, and deployed.

[Austin Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Asprem's scholarly analysis of the development of Enochian magic from its Elizabethan origins, through the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Satanism, purism, and modern takes is a refreshing take on the subject matter.

[Ankh156 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful, if somewhat opportunistic survey of the 'enochian' sector of 'occulture' in the 19th, 20th and the start of the 21st centuries. Treated from a philological, philosophical and sociological point of view, it also presents the personalities who promoted the extraordinary revelations and content of Dr Dee's Spiritual Diaries (Ashmole, 'Dr Rudd', Mathers and the Golden Dawn magicians, Crowley and on to more recent practitioners of 'enochian magic', latterly on the internet).